A-hyuk!

In fairness though, they didn't just make up their bias assertion; it's in other published works[1] and there is real evidence that old measurements were incorrect (biased towards the high side) when compared to other available contemporary measurements.

[1]: Landsea, C. W. Mon. Weath. Rev. 121, 1703–1714 (1993) - https://journals.ametsoc.org/configurable/content/journals$0...

Their corrections may be correct, but it's still always nicer when the magnitude of the signal is larger than that of the corrections to the data.

What is nice is vetting and correcting data for reliability and consistency.

Part of aiming for objectivity, and better understanding, isn't worrying about which direction a correction takes. At all. Only that it is a good correction.

Our brains constantly make up distracting narratives, if we let them.

If the correction had been the other way, some people would say scientists have been downplaying data and probably still are.

> Part of aiming for objectivity, and better understanding, isn't worrying about which direction a correction takes. At all. Only that it is a good correction.

I don't think you fully grasp the implications of arbitrarily correcting old measures. In the end, and accepting at face value these corrections, you're still manipulating old data to use the result of said manipulation as the whole basis of your hypothesis.

This approach automatically leads to questions on whether you draw your conclusions from the data, or you change the data to fit your conclusions.

Do you understand the risk that this poses in any discussion on a politically sensitive topic?

Think of the hit to the credibility of any claim supported by this data manipulation if later your method is deemed untrustworthy because it needs further updates, and how it would look if you had to correct it to move the dial either way (i.e., "they were lying from the start and are now covering their ass" vs "they felt their lie wasn't fooling anyone and decided to double down.")

> arbitrarily correcting old measures.

Why do you say the correction is arbitrary? Are there papers arguing for corrections in the other direction?

> Why do you say the correction is arbitrary?

Because it follows a method picked and chosen by the corrector.

> Are there papers arguing for corrections in the other direction?

It doesn't really matter if these corrections sway one way or the other. What matters is that someone decided that the original values weren't good, and proceeded to pick a way to come up with other values by changing the original ones.

I still don't understand your choice of words. It feels like you jumped into epistemology at the deep end and don't know how to swim in it. One article that pops up frequently around here is "Reality has a surprising amount of detail"

http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

I think you could profit from reading it. And I found "The Golem" a pretty good read too, if you want to go down that path:

https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/genera...

The point was that the corrections aren’t arbitrary.

> The point was that the corrections aren’t arbitrary.

But they are, aren't they? It matters nothing if you apply a precise rule to change values. What matters is that you picked a rule.

To add to the "not arbitrary corection" comments.

Correction is also not lying. Anyone who states that is not grasping something about a totally political topic/method.

It’s just reductionism: if changing data is bad, changing data is always bad.

Same nonsense gets you how terrible surgeons are (if cutting people with knives is bad, cutting people with knives is always bad).

It’s a good rhetorical technique because if you remove enough context you can pretty much always find something “exactly the same” to prove a point.

> It’s just reductionism: if changing data is bad, changing data is always bad.

It's not reductionism, and you're missing the point.

The whole point is that changing the original data to be able to support/reject hypothesis naturally raises the question of whether there is foul play.

If original measurements don't support your claim and suddenly by changing data you get it to fit your belief, any rational analysis would quickly flag the risk of data manipulation and scientific malpractice.

If instead you're dealing with a politically charged topic that attracts denialists and contrarians then you're making yourself vulnerable to accusations of fraud that will certainly be used to poison the well.

Do you understand why this is a problem?

> The whole point is that changing the original data to be able to support/reject hypothesis naturally raises the question of whether there is foul play.

People are applying a stronger point here where changing the original data is hard evidence of foul play and sufficient to completely discount any changes.

We'd be grappling with the reality of faster than light neutrinos now, though, if that was correct logic.

> People are applying a stronger point here where changing the original data is hard evidence of foul play and sufficient to completely discount any changes.

Manipulating field measurements is already frowned upon in all applications. There is no point. Things like data provenance is a serious issue, which is directly targeted by peer reviews and investigations on scientific malpractice. Even performance benchmarks highly favor standardized test and data sets.

Being objective matters. Once you start messing with original measurements, you place yourself in a position where you need to answer questions on whether you're just adapting data to fit your belief instead of the other way around.

In this case there is an observable relationship between wind speed and central surface pressure which has been observed over decades, but it has changed between the 1950s and the current day (although it has been stable across recent decades). The difference is in the measurement of wind speeds and with modern dropsondes we have much better measurement of wind speeds than existed in the 1950s. There is a clear and consistent bias in the windspeed-pressure relationship between decades. The correction that has been applied has been to apply a bias to correct the wind speed to the central pressure measurement. That correction was proposed in 2005 and so is nearly 20 years old at this point and had nothing to do with the current paper on cat 6 storms.

> The whole point is that changing the original data to be able to support/reject hypothesis

How do you know this? Do you understand the reasoning behind bias correction?

> Do you understand why this is a problem?

The problem is people do not understand bias correction and you are certainly not arguing on a methological level.

Tough shit. Nature doesn't care about political inconvenience. You must work with your most accurate representation of the data.

I wonder how these comments measure on the Henderson Scale of plot-derailment.

> It really feels like they cajoled the data to fit their conclusion.

(Emphasis mine.)

That Guy!

I could be wrong but I read your post as saying "politics can't deal with progress in scientific insight into the observable universe, thus scientists better be careful what they say." That's medieval. We are better than that... or at least we used to be. Otherwise the sun would still rotate around the earth.

Yup it’s a good way to make it fit the narrative and get more funding.

While I like a good conspiracy, it seems to me as though this was a perfectly appropriate outcome of technological advancement. Surely old storms would be biased high given a variety of reasons.

It's been acknowledged in the meteorological community that reconnaissance wind speed estimates for storms in the 1950s and 1960s have a high bias in the most intense storms, as the field was still in its infancy during that time period. Further advancement in later decades has improved the confidence in the estimates.

No conspiracy needed. After all, the first time a hurricane was intentionally flown into by a storm was only in 1943: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Surprise_Hurricane. The 1950s and 1960s are not that far removed from that initial attempt.

They do the same thing with temperature readings.

Precision of temperature readings improved over time

From the paper:

> "...of the 197 TCs [tropical cyclones] that were classified as category 5 during the 42-y period 1980 to 2021, which comprises the period of highest quality and most consistent data, half of them occurred in the last 17 y of the period (12). Five of those storms exceeded our hypothetical category 6 and all of these occurred in the last 9 y of the record. The most intense of these hypothetical category 6 storms, Patricia, occurred in the Eastern Pacific making landfall in Jalisco, Mexico, as a category 4 storm. The remaining category 6 storms all occurred in the Western Pacific... Fig. 1A shows these 5 storms on the existing Hurricane Wind Scale and our proposed extension."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2308901121

Theoretically, increased wind speeds are linked to increased sea surface temperatures, a warmer deeper ocean mixed layer, and more moistore in the atmosphere. However, increased vertical wind shear tends to break up the hurricane's chimney structure, and that might also increase with warming. Hence, a complicated prediction - but if conditions are right, it seems reasonable to conclude that unusually strong hurricanes will become more likely, even if overall frequency is unchanged.

> Hence, a complicated prediction - but if conditions are right, it seems reasonable to conclude that unusually strong hurricanes will become more likely, even if overall frequency is unchanged.

Not really, its not caused by warm water, its caused by DIFFERENCES in the temperature from the water and air, which is why we have actually seen fewer hurricanes over the last 20 years (ignoring post 2020 because this decade doesnt have a lot of data in) source: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Its hard to decide when picking a particular category, so what I did was charted category 1s + 2* category 2 + 3 * category 3 ...

Warmer water will put more water vapor into the air, which will provide more energy, even if the difference in temperature between water and (upper atmosphere) stays the same.

> I think it's more likely than not that tropical cyclones are getting more intense, and that they're hitting places that didn't typically get hit in the past

I think so too. One measure is the amount of insured losses from hurricanes. There's been an uptick in number of hurricanes and other weather events causing more then a billion dollars in insured losses- that's simply correlated with the increase in the value of insured assets.

Even if we assume that storms are not getting more intense, or climate is not changing, we cannot deny that we have more valuable assets to protect now. Which requires climate actions.

Was this adjusted for inflation?

"Even if this study is a lie, and storms are not getting more intense, we will still need to take your right to drive a car"

There's no need to strawman. Even if storms weren't getting stronger we'd still have to contend with rising sea levels and the loss of arable land just for starters. While it would be ideal to live in a state of progress such that most folks didn't own nor operate a vehicle there is no credible threat at this point toward not being able to own and operate a vehicle.

How is no independent mobility progress?

People don't have independent mobility now. The majority of cars are not designed for off road and therefore can only go where there are streets. If public transportation provides the same access, then there is no loss of mobility.

Well yes, but in 99.9% of cases, there are roads to where you want to go. Public transport is not independent. Live in a rural area? Fsck you, no bus/train for you. Have a large dog? Nope, no transport for your dog. Want to travel at 3 in the morning? Nope. Need to carry stuff with you, more than you can carry? Nope. Want to go to a protest? Nope, no buses/trains driving there today.

That's why the post that started all this expressed a desire to live in a future where people could replace their cars with public transportation as opposed to advocating that we get rid of all cars now. Currently public transportation isn't viable for many people, but it would be nice if in the future it was.

That being said, I think that you are overstating some of the limitations of public transportation. The NYC subway runs 24 hours, allows dogs, I have taken it while transporting 200 lbs of steel before, and it did not stop running during the George Floyd protests (including after curfew).

>While it would be ideal to live in a state of progress such that most folks didn't own nor operate a vehicle

No it wouldn't. It is ideal to live in a state of progress where most "folks" can afford to own and operate a vehicle that allows them to go wherever they want whenever they want and take people with them.

The US has followed this as a guiding principle over the last hundred years and largely succeeded, however the end-state seems to be a built environment where car ownership is not simply a widely enjoyed privilege so much as a de facto requirement to go about the activities of daily living, which feels, at least to me, somehow less free.

If they can accomplish the same things with more efficient public transportation, then that seems like it would be progress.

Why is that “progress?” Why is “progress” a good thing in its own and who decides what “progress” even is?

I addressed that in my post. In this case I'm using progress to mean accomplishing the same thing with less resources. It's not a good thing on its own, it's a good thing because resources are limited and expending those resources tends to produce pollution.

You aren’t accomplishing the same thing, you are providing less tailored experience and calling it progress because you believe your opinions are progress and any others are regressive. Thanks for proving that

Instead of resorting to personal attacks, why not present a counter argument?

Only that you are not accomplishing the same thing. You are accomplishing something inferior. And please don't make me explain to you how you don't get, by far, the same level of service, the same amount of destinations, 24/7 availability, etc with public transportation than with your car.

When I lived in NYC, the experience of using public transportation was far superior to the experience of driving. I didn't have to purchase and maintain a car, I could read or use my phone during the trip, when I went out with friends I didn't have to worry about a designated driver, I could travel late at night when I would be too tired to drive safely, in the winter I didn't have to spend half the trip in a cold car, my risk of injury during my commute was much lower, etc.

1. Most people do not live in New York. I live in Seattle and driving is not a problem except for an hour at the end of the day.

2. Public transportation comes with its own set of risks. It is up to the individual to determine what they wish. Neither option is “progress” it is a trade off.

If you read back, this discussion was about a scenario where most people don't need to own or operate their own car. That implies that they would live in a place with good public transportation like New York has now.

Arguing over the semantics of the word "progress" is missing the point. There are very real problems with building society to cater to individual private car ownership. Instead building society to cater to public transportation would address those issues. If you see a different way to address those issues than why not present it?

I live ON the beach, and the beach hasn't changed one iota in the past 40 years, other than a loss of the scarp during / after large hurricanes. The TV "science" is becoming so ridiculous that it's hard to fathom that there are people who actually believe it.

Am I to believe that there is one large, interconnected ocean, and that fluid naturally levels itself out, but that also, somehow, certain places experience sea level rise while others don't? Is it some huge coincidence that the places experiencing extreme sea level rise (e.g., Solomon Islands) are ephemeral and ever-changing volcanic islands and other volcanically active regions that sit upon a soft foundation of molten mantle?

Use your brain, my friend.

There is absolutely no possible way that you (or any other person) would notice a 4 inch GLOBAL AVERAGE rise in sea level over the last few decades. I don't care if you literally spent 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year on your belly at the high tide mark.

The data is the data and you need a lot more than "living on the beach" to refute it.

And yes, the sea level is different in different parts of the Earth. Why? Because forces are different in different parts of the Earth. Current (which impart forces) alone is enough to make a difference in sea level in two different parts of the Earth.

And yes, land changing elevation is colloquially part of sea level rise.

The problem with using your brain is it doesn't make you an expert in things, or able to refute expertise without actual knowledge. And simple observations do not amount to much knowledge on anything but the most simple subject.

Absolutely no way huh? There are literally corals (East Florida rock reef) that are barely covered in water at high tide, and these same corals were the same amount covered in 1988. I would notice. I would also notice my best friend's seawall become inundated every high tide now. I know these things are uncomfortable to hear, because a panel of dubiously grant-funded "scientists, who otherwise do nothing but produce irreproducible white papers, said differently.

4 inches is no joke for a small Florida beach town. It's not like California, where you have 80 foot cliffs and wide beaches. My favorite childhood beach spots would have been halved. Instead, they're exactly the same. 4 inches would have ruined much of our town's waterfront property.

Go look up pictures from Liberty Island, 1918. The water level is at the same brick as it is at high tide today.

Global warming is a false religion.

> Go look up pictures from Liberty Island, 1918.

    "The most obvious problem with the pics is that unless they were taken at the exact same point in a tidal cycle they say nothing about average sea level rise,". Raymo said that the old photo could have been taken near high tide and the recent photo could have been taken near low tide. We just don’t know.

All one needs to do, in order to prove the theory correct, is to take a new photo at a high springtide[1]. If it's no higher than the old photo, then the theory is correct. If it is higher, then we don't know (because the old photo could have been taken at a lower tide).

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Without any disrespect intended, anybody, who thinks the ocean is meaningfully rising because of human activity, I'd rather not have living in my town; they're likely to vote to raise my taxes because the TV told them that if they give money to the government the weather will be gooder.

1. https://www.tideschart.com/United-States/New-York/New-York-C...

Surely you would suspect any photo of being photoshopped?

Satellites take millions of "photos" around the world every day, and combined with local measurements, we have a pretty accurate record of how the sea level around Manhattan has changed over the last century: https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=8518750&c_date=1900/1...

> Without any disrespect intended, anybody, who thinks the ocean is meaningfully rising because of human activity, I'd rather not have living in my town;

Without any disrespect, perhaps you would think differently if you'd had a career in exploration geophysics for mineral resources and energy spanning a few decades as I have had.

I started out with continent wide surveying to peg old pre-GPS maps to WGS84 and have worked on mapping the global magnetic field, the geoid (mean 1G gravity surface), continent wide tidal models and radiometric references, etc.

It's clear enough that human activity is causing more heat energy to be trapped in the lower atmosphere and upper sea levels, the artic and antartic are slowly shrinking back .. and none of this is as yet readily perpectabe to the casual human eye - good instrumentation and records tell a different story, as was peer linked in a comment here.

I have little interest in convincing you, this is just a factual statement of my experience and yourself and your town can continue to believe whatever you collectively choose - it has zero impact on what is actually happening and what the next generations will have to deal with as a result of a century of excessive fossil fuel consumption.

A new generation has come up since Al Gore's fictional movie from 2006, presumably starting production in 2005. I have seen zero evidence of the predicted calamitous events that would distiguish this day from those in 2005. however I have seen the evidence of widespread problems in children who are having nighmares of a future "planetary emergency" which never seems to arrive. If children with emotional problems are the preferred social outcome of this political science, then the science is a success

Given how vehemently wrong you are I can only imagine you don't understand what's being communicated and don't want to learn what's being communicated.

Sea levels are rising primarily because the sea is warming, and water, like most substances, expands as it heats up.

Global warming does not affect every place on Earth evenly, that's partly why the phrase "climate change" is preferred. It's possible that you live in an area that due to the local or regional geography, the sea level has not changed much.

Bruh.

With tornadoes the traditional F(Fujita) classification is based on how much damage the wind does. There is a correlation to windspeed. but the final verdict is based on damage done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujita_scale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale

Why have categories at all. Just use stats.

Stats, like wind in miles-per-hour? That seems arbitrary. Why not just use wind speed in plank-lengths per zeptosecond, then?

It's almost as if expressive abstractions are helpful for human understanding of large sets of numerical statistics, no?

nobody knows the difference between four and five and three and two. Its always on the news as a "warzone". so a real energy number would be nice.

A total energy level could help with total damage predictions, but, for the individual, wind speed and storm surge are key.

> they're hitting places that didn't typically get hit in the past

The human population is four times larger than it was in the 1970's, so there's more things to hit are they are often built in more marginal locations.

Can you clarify?

Are you saying that locations of the hurricanes have not changed, it's merely that there are now people/structures there so it's now noticeable? Or that humans are altering storm paths based on structural changes to the environment?

Mostly the former. with more developed coastline and more people living there, more damage is going to happen. Could storms be altered by human activity? Sure, but it's very difficult to reconcile how much is human action vs a hurricane making landfall in an area that wasn't urban 50 years ago.

Just making the observation that there are more humans and a larger built environment. When there is a natural disaster, there's likely to be more human impacts now than 50 years ago, regardless of the location or cause.